Kerry's
Cambodia Troubles Ignored

According to Newsweek'sassistant managing editor Evan Thomas, "There's one other base
here, the media. Let's talk a little media bias here. The media, I think, wants
Kerry to win and I think they're going to portray Kerry and Edwards . . . as
being young and dynamic and optimistic and there's going to be this glow about
them . . ." (Inside Washingtontelevision show, July 10).

Thomas' prediction is amply supported by the
(non)coverage which the Denver dailies, like most of the rest of the media, have
given to this week's meltdown of the Kerry campaign.

As reported in The Congressional Record,on March 27, 1986, Sen. John Kerry spoke on the Senate floor against U.S.
support for the anti-communist contras in Nicaragua:

"I remember Christmas of 1968 sitting on a
gunboat in Cambodia. I remember what it was like to be shot at by Vietnamese and
Khmer Rouge and Cambodians, and have the president of the United States telling
the American people that I was not there; the troops were not in Cambodia. I
have that memory which is seared - seared - in me . . ."

Likewise, Kerry wrote an Oct. 14, 1979, letter
to the editor of the Boston Herald:"I remember spending Christmas Eve of
1968 five miles across the Cambodian border being shot at by our South
Vietnamese allies who were drunk and celebrating Christmas. The absurdity of
almost being killed by our own allies in a country in which President Nixon
claimed there were no American troops was very real."

He repeated the Cambodia Christmas story in
Senate committee hearings in June 1992 and September 1997.

Actually, in December 1968, the president of the
United States was Lyndon Johnson, not Richard Nixon. Nixon's statement that
there were "no American combat troops in Cambodia" was made in November 1971.

All available evidence indicates that Kerry was
lying about Christmas in Cambodia.

As detailed in the new book Unfit for
Command,every officer in Kerry's chain of command denies that Kerry's Swift
boat came within 50 miles of Cambodia. Three crewmen on Kerry's boat have denied
that they ever went into Cambodia. (The other two refused to be interviewed.)

In Douglas Brinkley's Kerry biography, Tour
of Duty,Kerry told Brinkley that he spent Christmas Eve 1968 "near the
Cambodian border" in the town of Sa Dec. Sa Dec is in the center of South
Vietnam and 50 miles from Cambodia.

The New York Daily News,the New York
Post,The Washington Times,and the London Telegraphall
covered the Christmas in Cambodia story early this week, but Colorado's Rocky
Mountain Newsand Denver Posthave failed to do so.

In Colorado, the Cambodia fraud has been covered
in depth on the Hugh Hewitt Show, a national radio program broadcast on KNUS-AM
(710) from 4-7 p.m. weekdays. Hewitt interviewed Steve Gardner, who served on
Kerry's boat for two of the four months that Kerry spent in Vietnam, from
November 1968 through January 1969. Gardner maintains that the boat never came
within 50 miles of Cambodia. You can read the interview at:
hughhewitt.com/index.htm#postid766.

The Denver dailies have covered the story
exclusively by attacking Swift Boat Veterans for Truth through:

• An Associated Press article in both
papers reporting that John McCain denounced the attacks on Kerry (without
providing any evidence that the attacks are factually wrong);

• The Post'sJim Spencer defending
Kerry's Purple Hearts (a July 30 column with more substance than other Kerry
defenses); and

• An AP article pointing out that John
Corsi, the co-author of Unfit for Commandhas made disparaging remarks
about Islam and Catholicism (News, Aug. 11).

Early in the week, the Kerry campaign denied
that Kerry had ever claimed to have spent Christmas in Cambodia. Confronted with
evidence, the campaign refused to answer questions. On Wednesday, the campaign
abandoned the Christmas-in-Cambodia story that had been "seared" in Kerry's
memory. The campaign told Fox News that Kerry was in Cambodia sometime, but
would not specify when. The campaign told ABC News that Kerry was in the Mekong
Delta, which "consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on
Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol."

To the contrary, the Mekong River flows from
Cambodia into Vietnam and does not border the two countries; the Mekong Delta is
adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, and is nowhere near Cambodia.

The Newsignored the story of Kerry
retracting three decades of Christmas-in-Cambodia tales. The Postalso
ignored the story, and instead ran the attack on John Corsi which had appeared
the day before in the News.

It is as if the media had covered the Bush
National Guard story only by impugning Bush's critics, while barely
acknowledging the substance of the charges. Evan Thomas was right.

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